The Drug Traffickers

Tobacco kills nearly six million people each year, according to WHO, and more than five million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use, while more than 600,000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke. Nearly 80 per cent of the world's one billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries. A new online WHO Global Report on Trends in Tobacco Smoking, launched today during the conference, finds that in 2010, there were 3.9 billion non-smokers aged 15 years and over in WHO member States (or 78 per cent of the 5.1 billion population aged 15 and over). According to the report, the number is projected to rise to 5 billion (or 81 per cent of the projected 6.1 billion population aged 15 and over) by 2025 if the current pace of tobacco cessation continues.

"This trend indicates countries are making inroads, but much greater action is needed to curb the tobacco epidemic if the global target to cut tobacco consumption by 30 per cent by 2025 to reduce premature deaths from NCDs [non-communicable diseases] is to be met," it said.

Countries wishing to protect their citizens through larger pictorial warnings on packages or by introducing plain packaging are being intimidated by tobacco industry threats of lengthy and costly litigation, according to the UN health chief. Dr. Chan noted that in the Philip Morris challenge to Uruguay's tobacco packaging laws, WHO has filed an amicus brief with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

She also said Australia's legislation that mandates plain packaging, designed to make tobacco products less attractive, is also being challenged in a dispute being considered at the World Trade Organization. Following Australia's lead, more than 10 countries are considering plain packaging, the WHO said. Ireland became the second country to introduce plain packaging as law. The United Kingdom, Burkina Faso and New Zealand are the next most advanced followed by Chile, Panama, France, Norway, and Turkey.

"Bans on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship are not comprehensive as long as colour logos and other branding continue to operate as silent salesmen," she said.

Big Pharma - Big Profits

Tamiflu maker accused of secrecy over trial data. Scientists are set to raise serious questions about the effectiveness of Tamiflu, its side-effects and the opaque way drugs get approved for widespread use on the NHS.

Cochrane, a non-profit group dedicated to analyzing medical evidence, brings together the combined results of the world's best medical research studies, and are recognised as the gold standard in evidence-based health care. But during their two-year study into Tamiflu, researchers claimed they were hampered in their efforts to fully appraise the drug by the refusal of its manufacturer, Roche, to hand over all the raw data used to support their claims.

Professor Sir Iain Chalmers, a founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, told The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: "We have invested millions of pounds on stockpiling Tamiflu on the basis of a paper that presented the results of 12 trials, only two of which have been published. The investigation... shows Roche refused to provide data to evaluate these trials. Investigators got some data through the European Medicines Agency, but this doesn't answer all of the questions they have." He added: "It is a disgrace that Roche have not provided this data."

Tom Jefferson, the lead author of the study, said he was very concerned about the unwillingness of Roche to provide all the raw data. It is understood the European Medicines Agency that approved Tamiflu also only saw a proportion of the drugs trial results. The US Food and Drug Administration is thought not to have reviewed the largest ever trial of Tamiflu when considering it for approval.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tamiflu-maker-accused-of-secrecy-over-trial-data-6290699.html

Drug Dealing

Reckitt, the Hull-based drug and cleaning products company, plotted under the codename “Project Eric” to block rivals from selling cheaper generic copies of Gaviscon. Reckitt Benckiser faces a series of investigations by competition and health regulators over an alleged secret plan to maintain a monopoly in the supply of Gaviscon, the lucrative heartburn medicine. E-mails between executives discuss how to “drag out as long as possible” the process of other companies being allowed to manufacture generic versions, and their intention to create “a further barrier to competitors” and “restrict entry for new competitors”.

Before a rival company can create a generic drug, the British National Formulary must give it an official title. Reckitt tried to claim Gaviscon was unique and such a title could not be issued. It objected in 2000, 2003, 2005 and 2006.The drug company also successfully lobbied the British Pharmacopoeia Commission (BPC), part of the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency, that for health and safety reasons, a detailed quality specification known as a monograph was needed.

One Reckitt executive wrote: “Should we not drag it out as long as possible . . . £9 million of business is at stake”. The e-mails talk of “a clever idea” - to make a near-identical product with a different name. “There must be something we can dig out of the cupboard!” one executive wrote.

Reckitt tried to persuade doctors to prescribe the new Gaviscon Advance. In 2005 the industry’s watchdog found it guilty of unethical behaviour.

The news comes shortly after the European Commission began an inquiry into whether pharmaceutical companies were employing illegal tactics to delay generic versions.In January, it raided the offices of some of the world’s largest drug companies, including Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Astrazeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co and Sanofi-Aventis. In 2005 AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish drug manufacturer, was fined €60 million for trying to delay rival versions of its ulcer drug, Losec, thereby keeping prices artificially high.

Health Racism

Emergency room doctors are prescribing strong narcotics more often to patients who complain of pain, but minorities are less likely to get them than whites, a new study finds.

Even for the severe pain of kidney stones, minorities were prescribed narcotics such as oxycodone and morphine less frequently than whites. Minorities were slightly more likely than whites to get aspirin, ibuprofen and similar drugs for pain. The analysis of more than 150,000 emergency room visits over 13 years found differences in prescribing by race in both urban and rural hospitals, in all U.S. regions and for every type of pain.

Linda Simoni-Wastila of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Pharmacy said the race gap finding may reveal some doctors' suspicions that minority patients could be drug abusers lying about pain to get narcotics. The irony, she said, is that blacks are the least likely group to abuse prescription drugs.

"If anybody argues they have no social biases that sway clinical practice, they have not been thoughtful about the issue or they're not being honest with themselves," said Dr. Thomas L. Fisher, an emergency room doctor at the University of Chicago Medical Center

The Drug Dealers

Drug firms are failing to make drugs affordable for the world's poor, a report by charity Oxfam suggests.

The world's biggest drug firms have done little research into diseases that affect poor people, the report said. And their overzealous protection of patents means many poor people cannot afford the drugs they need. Currently 85% of the world's population is priced out of the industry's market . Those who cannot afford drugs often pay with their lives.

Malaria claims the lives of one million people every year, while two million people die annually from TB.

Between 1999 and 2004, there were only three new drugs targeted at diseases affecting the developing world out of 163 drugs brought to market .

Yet for all its no doubt sincere bleatings for a fairness and justice , Oxfam can see no further than the continuance of the very same same capitalist system that causes these problems .

In response to the drug companies , who argue they need to charge higher prices to justify the billions of dollars they spend on research and development and that high taxes and mark-ups by pharmacists and dispensing doctors also push medicine prices higher, they point out and that in addition, their drugs and brands are often ripped off in countries with poor copyright protection , all Oxfam can do is offer the Third World as a bigger market to exploit and source for lower development costs and cheaper manufacturing. Oxfam want "prices for essential medicines need to be tiered, in line with people's ability to pay"

Surely , it must be medical needs that should determine access to medicines and not the ability to pay , no matter how the pricing system may be organised . It is this free access to all the means of life which is the demand of socialists .